Some mornings I wake up from this dream about a friend I haven't seen in 20-odd years, and my chest feels hollowed out with longing for him, for that connection. It feels deliciously right and disappointingly sad at the same time. It's a mystery.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

I just joined this swap on Swap-bot that I think is worth spreading the word about, because I think it's a really great idea. It's called "Good News from Newspapers" and it requires you to collect stories from your paper and/or other papers that are good news stories. You have several months to do it, and you put them in a journal and send it to your partner.

Obviously it would be nice to have a whole journal full of good news stories to read. I'm planning to make two journals so I can keep one. But what fascinates me is that I think it gets more complicated--What is good news? I mean, what would you look for? I'm looking in the local section. So far I've found a story about a humble man who lived frugally and left 3 million dollars to charity. And the other one is a dog story. Ok, that's easy, I mean, any dog story is going to be good news to me. But really, what are people going to look for? I see stories about politics and my eyes glaze over. I could care less. I mean, of course I care. But I don't find that happy reading. And the economy? Boring. But what if there was a story about a new grant for local artists? That would be good news to me but would anyone not living here give a rip? So it's tricky. But I think it's worth a shot, just to see what happens. I wish more people would join the swap, so far there's only 9.